Steve Rubel on Google/AIM Interop

Steve points out that it was exactly a year ago that Google and AIM jointly announced an agreement to build a bridge bewteen the two companies' instant messaging technologies. 12 months later, and nothings happened.

[from Micro Persuasion: A Year Later, Google Talk and AIM Still Don't Interoperate]

Upon further review, the language in the press release is m-i-g-h-t-y curious. It states that the agreement benefits users by: "Enabling Google Talk and AIM instant messaging users to communicate with each other, provided certain conditions are met." (Italics are mine.) Hmmm, what conditions?

Or maybe there is so much reorg going on at AOL that they can't get it together? Or perhaps it's the low numbers for Gtalk adoption?

Technically, the integration should be doable in that time frame, so what gives?

In the meantime, I wind up running four IM clients on my desktop.

tags: google, aol, aim, instant, messaging, gtalk, interoperability

Comments

[hollyster]

There's always meebo... no need to download all these clients... one stop shop ;)